What’s New in Webex for 2021?

The latest features of “New Webex”

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Whats-New-in-Webex-for-2021
Collaboration

Published: January 22, 2021

Rebekah Carter - Writer

Rebekah Carter

Cisco has captured the attention of the UC and collaboration space for the beginning of this year, with the announcement of the “new” Webex experience. The all-new Webex promises an aligned experience where all unified comms components come together in the same enhanced platform.

To celebrate the arrival of the new Webex ecosystem, Cisco started January with an article outlining all of the capabilities and features users can now explore. These range all the way from tools to reduce meeting fatigue, to solutions for remote employee engagement.

Here are the features you need to know about.

Updates to Webex Meetings

Webex Meetings will now be more immersive than ever thanks to the arrival of a series of new features. Gesture support means that you can share your feedback through visual gestures that translate into icons on a screen. You can clap, raise your hand, give a thumbs up or down, and everyone will see your input in the form of an icon.

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Breakout sessions are also now available through Webex. Meeting hosts will be able to allow users to join any breakout sessions without manual intervention. Users can also join breakouts when they’ve been assigned to a different breakout already. This provides smaller groups with more flexibility for collaboration and idea-sharing over video and audio for classrooms, brainstorming, and workshops.

There’s also the arrival of a real-time health-checker to mention. Mobile users on iOS and Android will see an indicator in their meetings that demonstrates the current meeting conditions.

Webex Messaging and Calling

In the messaging environment, Cisco is delivering more personalisation options to Webex users. You can now edit messages even if they included attachments originally to fix typos or update text.

In the calling environment, the features available depend on what version of Webex calling service you have. For the Webex app with UC manager, you can park and retrieve phone calls, and allow other employees to retrieve the call from separate phones. There’s the option to monitor agent calls for quality assurance, and supervisors can therefore guarantee the quality of a customer service call.

Silent monitoring allows the supervisor to hear both participants in the call, while neither participant hears the supervisor. Cisco Contact Centre Enterprise finesse control uses the Webex app as a softphone for silent monitoring.

You can also ensure that incoming calls are visible, by controlling when to bring call windows to the front of the screen automatically.

Webex Devices

Webex is consistently adding new features for common device and app experiences and support new workplace environments.

The new Webex desk camera is an intelligent and affordable camera solution to enhance the remote meeting experience and enable safe in-person conversations in the office. The camera can deliver 4K video with incredible low light performance, and you can manage it with Webex Control Hub.

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Another feature arriving on Webex devices is the “Raise Hand on Device” solution. This grabs the attention of meeting hosts even if you’re not in view currently. You just click a button on your Touch control panel or device touch screen interface. The Webex Room system will then let everyone know you’re waiting to speak.

Also, cloud-connected devices for far-end camera control are also available with Webex now. The far-end camera control function means that users can disable auto framing and get a better fitting image for the application in question. This could be an ideal solution for remote monitoring of patients, remote viewing a group, and engineering. This is now possible with Webex cloud products in 1:1 calls and in Meetings.

Webex Industry Solutions and Integrations

Users on Webex can now schedule meetings through a third-party calendar app with Slack integrations. This is part of Cisco’s strategy to introduce more ways of getting the best possible meeting experiences on your current apps. When scheduling meetings from Slack apps, users can select “Webex Meeting” from the pull-down menu.

Integrations for Developers also include the arrival of SDK and Widget technology. There’s a mobile SDK for high frame rate content sharing and background noise reduction, which can benefit any mobile app. Webex is also offering a Meeting API with webhooks meeting participants admin. If set, the Admin may specify the email of a user in a site they manage, and the API will deliver responses on behalf of the user.

The Messaging Events API now has a file download and preview option. When a file with sensitive information uploads into a space, the compliance officer can track who updated the file, who downloaded it, and who saw a preview of the cover page.

Webex Contact Centre Updates

For Webex Contact Centre, new data centres are now present in Asia Pacific and Latin America. To enable greater global access to cloud-based solutions for customer engagement, Webex expanded its contact centre availability across the Asia Pacific and Latin American regions. New data centres in Singapore and Brazil are available for the Webex Contact Centre 1.0 environment, which build on the recent arrival of Germany and Canada data centre expansions.

Integrated Webex Experience Management capabilities are now expanding to include post-call surveys through IVR too. Post-call feedback surveys are now fully available through IVR, as well as through email and SMS delivery options, to ensure that you can collect immediate feedback from customers after a contact centre interaction.

Webex Security, Edge, and Control Hub

Finally, there’s a slew of updates to the Webex Control Hub, security, and edge services available today. For admins, Webex Control Hub places monitoring, management, troubleshooting, edge, analytics, and hybrid services across all collaboration resources in just one pane of glass. Other additions include:

  • Scheduler for Report generator: Webex simplifies tasks with a scheduler functionality that removes the demand for manually running reports through different date ranges. You can schedule reports to run whenever you choose
  • Call media optimisation: When more employees are working from home through mobile remote access, bandwidth will be in high demand. The Media optimisation feature ensures the media of SIP calls between two users of the Webex app will be sent point to point, rather than through Expressway. This should reduce the impact on bandwidth consumption at the corporation edge, while minimising call latency
  • Override default settings: The Control Hub Webex Calling services will now include overriding options for default phone settings permitting admins to choose calling settings at the Location, Customer, and Device level. This allows for better background images, short/long interdigit timers, station display names, line key labels, and line key LED patterns
  • Monthly Builds for SW Upgrades on Edge connected devices: Users can now upgrade the software on Edge connected devices for Webex Room systems through the cloud. Full control and visibility is available through Webex Control

Cisco is also introducing access to historical analytics going forward for all global customers in the Webex community. The historical workplace service can be configured through your Control Settings. Trends for occupancy and environmental conditions, including temperature, noise, and humidity, also offer an added level of analytics for shared meeting environments.

To learn more about the latest features and updates to the Webex experience, stay tuned on UC Today, and remember to check out the Cisco Webex website too.

 

 

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